"Sonia…" he breathed.
Even the sound of her name rolling off his tongue sent warmth up and down her spine.
Embarrassed by her own skittish reactions, she rose to a standing position and asked, "What are you doing here?"
"I was going to ask you the same thing."
"I'm going to be staying here."
He lifted an eyebrow.
"My dad owns this place," she added.
He raised both eyebrows. "Is that what you really think?"
"Yeah, it's what I know. The roads going into Aspen Valley are iced over, so I took a detour just to be safe. My dad said the cabin was empty. It's his cabin or I wouldn't be here."
"The cabin is owned by both my mom and your daddy. At the moment. After the divorce, the cabin will belong to my mom but I don't think your daddy got into all that with you, did he?"
"No, he didn't…" She frowned. "Look, if this is going to be a problem for you, I'll just call my dad. We'll get this straightened out."
"No need to call daddy. We're both adults, right? We'll figure it out," he told her. His tone sounded serious, but then he gave her that wicked, crooked grin he always used whenever he was up to something.
Sonia bit her bottom lip, her gaze skirting across his chest. "Yeah, I guess we will."
His scent was subtle, smooth, and masculine. Whatever it was—his cologne or maybe the smell of the soap he used—it was pulling her in, making her mind wander to inappropriate things. Like the thick bulge pushing against the thin fabric of his running pants. This was the same feeling she had every time she was in Andre's presence. The last time was four years ago. She didn't remember the pull being this strong.
"God, how long has it been?" he asked.
"Almost four years," she said, almost too quickly. "We left a couple months after my fourteenth birthday."
He smiled. "Yes, I remember the party they threw for you. You've grown up."
His gaze moved from her face and trailed down her body. He didn't hide the fact that he was sizing her up…or checking her out.
"You too." That was all she could manage.
He chuckled. "Well…I was grown when the three of you left."
Sonia's stomach fluttered as she took in his muscular build, thick biceps, and wide shoulders. His tall six feet three frame cast a wide shadow over her, but she didn't feel the least bit intimidated by this man who'd been out of her life for years. She was drawn to him.
A brisk wind swept across the porch and folded across her skin. Her body shivered from instant chills, but deep down inside there was something else. She felt something else. Some other emotion ran deep within her as she stood there staring at Andre Trenton, trying to figure him out…like she'd tried to do since the day she first saw him.
He held his arm out, palm open between them.
"What?" She mumbled, confused.
"You have suitcases and stuff, right? Give me your keys."
"Oh." She blushed and fished my keys out of her pocket.
"Go inside. It's cold." He stepped aside and motioned for her to come inside.
Relieved, she walked into the cabin. Andre walked right out of it.
"Hey, don't you need a coat or something?" she called out behind him.
He gave a short laugh on the way to the SUV.
"Or not…" she mumbled. She gawked, watching him walk out into the snow and pull up the back lift.
His muscles rippled under taut sun-kissed skin that simply screamed to be touched. No matter the season, his skin was always the same flawless light copper hue. Snowflakes melted instantly as soon as they met his flesh. He was unbothered by the deadly chill in the air. If the rumors were true, his ability to walk out into the snow without flinching made sense. He had three other brothers. Same mom. Different dads. And Sonia had solid proof that his older brother, Jacob, was a shifter. Too bad neither Andre or Jacob would confirm if Andre was one himself.
As he worked, Andre's jogging pants had slipped down an inch or so, revealing his eye-catching V-cut. His form was rock-solid irresistible. He was pure perfection. Everything about him was, even down to the immaculate birthmark on his right shoulder. She had asked him about it once, boggled by the pattern that it formed. A circular spiral about six levels deep. She'd never seen a birthmark quite like it.
He lifted her big heavy suitcases like they were filled with nothing but air. She watched from the foyer as he brought them in one by one. All four of them. He brought her plant in last. After placing it on the foyer table, he shut the door and locked them inside and reached for a shirt. He mopped the shirt across his torso and also used it to dry his hair.
"A plant? Really?" he exclaimed.
"It's my bonsai. I found it abandoned at a secondhand shop a few days ago. It still needed some attention so I couldn't leave it behind."
He cracked a bright smile. "Of course, how could I forget who you are? On the other hand, you've got enough stuff to open up a clothing shop. How long are you staying?"
She shrugged. "A few days, maybe a week."
"That looks more like a few months’ worth of clothes to me," he joked.
She rolled her eyes. "That…coming from a guy who owns maybe three pairs of pants and a couple of shirts. Whatever. I have a couple sets of suits just in case I get called back for a second interview and then my regular clothes."
"We're not all spoiled little daddy's girls, you know? Asks for what she wants and gets it and then some."
"That's not who I am," she countered. "And don't get me started about being spoiled."
This time he shrugged with indifference. "I don't own a lot of clothes, because I don't need a lot of clothes."
My gaze dropped to his body again, giving him another once over.
He didn't wear a lot of clothes either.
He was right. He didn't need clothes. He was a living, breathing Adonis. Personified male perfection. He was sex on legs with a repetition that lived up to the hype, if the rumors were true. And the rumors had to be true. In the past, she'd seen the way women lured him and tried to initiate sex with him.
Sonia forced her gaze away from his body and looked around the cabin. She recognized the setup and layout, but most of the furniture inside was new. The walls were also painted a different color and the window treatments had been changed.
"Is someone else here?" she asked.
"No…just me." He gave her a lingering stare. "And you."
"I thought you and your brother were still living together in Aspen Valley. Or at least that's what I heard…"
Dad had mentioned last week that Wanda was visiting her sons in Aspen Valley and used that as an excuse for not showing up at the meeting scheduled with their lawyers. Their divorce meetings were old news to Sonia, but at the mention of Wanda's sons—one in particular—her curiosity had been piqued. It had been so long since she'd seen Andre. Who would've known that she would bump into him again so soon and in a place where she wasn't expecting to see him. She couldn't help but to admit…she knew Andre was still here, living somewhere in Aspen Valley. And as small as the town was, she had anticipated seeing him before her visit ended. What she didn't expect was how easy it was to find him. Only trying to make it to town before the blizzard hit, obviously she hadn't even been looking at the moment.
He grinned. "That's what you heard…?"
She nodded. "Yeah, you know how everyone talks around here."
"And you believe everything everyone says."
"No."
"My brother and I still share a house in town. The same house we grew up in together," he said. "I work for Remly now. They got a contract to do maintenance work on the dam out here. The assignment was temporary but my mom suggested that I use the cabin to keep from having to drive back and forth every morning. Work has been called off for a few days until the snow clears. We're expected to get three feet total, maybe more."
"Oh. You know, it's possible my dad didn't know you'd be here," she said.
"He didn't
or he probably wouldn't have sent you here," he said.
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"Your daddy doesn't really like me. It's too bad my mom and your dad broke up. She really thought he was the one she'd spend the rest of her life with. Turns out I know my mom very well…she favors constant change over stability. It's not that she didn't love your dad or anything like that."
"Oh." She looked down at the floor.
"It's nothing personal. She did it to my dad too. Moved on and got pregnant with my youngest brother just like she did the other times."
Sonia swallowed. "Well, in my case, they weren't fighting. They've split up on good terms. My birth mom and dad fought all the time before they went their separate ways."
"So…here we are again," he said.
"Yes, here we are again."
"So, uh…do whatever. I would say make yourself at home, but ownership of the cabin is up in the air. There's enough food and water to get us through the storm just in case we can't get outside in the morning. I've got a generator in the basement which seems to be working alright. If you need anything, let me know now so I can go get it. We won't know how bad it'll be until the storm gets here."
At the mention of food, Sonia's stomach churned and growled something fierce and she prayed he hadn't heard. "Okay. I'm all set, so I should be fine. No need to go out in this."
"Great. Well, I'm gonna go drag your suitcases in your room. I took some steak out of the freezer earlier. I was getting ready to make tacos. Good timing, right? We're both hungry."
"Sounds better than the sandwiches I brought," she commented.
Sonia watched his retreating back as he dragged two of her suitcases into one of the rooms. Her old bedroom. Having only stayed in this cabin for a few months, she wondered why it felt so comforting to be here all over again.
She hadn't realized it before, but she missed the countryside. The quiet. The peacefulness. The sounds of nature.
And…she had missed Andre. And not one week had passed by over the last four years that she didn't think about him.
Chapter 2
Sonia’s step-mom, Wanda, was a chef. She had worked as a chef before she left Aspen Valley, and when they got settled down in Cincinnati, she found a job as a sous chef at one of the most popular restaurants in the downtown area. She taught her son well. Or maybe the talent ran in their blood. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a steak cooked to perfection. Not since she'd moved out of her dad's home, anyway. The delicious steak wasn't the only thing that intrigued her.
Sonia's attention roamed to Andre's hands. They were big, talented…and calloused. Based on her observations of him in the past, it didn't surprise her that he chose a profession that required the use of his hands.
"Before we left the state, you were working for…what's the name…Justice Enterprises, right? Now you work for Remly. Why'd you quit?" she asked.
He grinned. "Who said I quit?"
Sonia cocked her head to one side and narrowed her gaze.
"Remly Engineering is owned by Justice Enterprises," he said.
"Oh. I'm not as educated about Aspen Valley as I thought I was."
"You were still young when you left. It took me a while to figure out who owned what and all that too."
"So, you got your job right back?"
"Not right away. Mom was trying to get me to come with you guys, remember? I just couldn't. I wanted both of you to stay, but everything I knew was here. I guess I thought my mom would change her mind and stick around, but when both of you left, that was it. I just couldn't get back in the swing of things, you know. Didn't help that I had a rap sheet with the cops either," he said. "I did a few short road trips with a biker club, but that wasn't me. I don't favor moving from place to place. Thanks to my brother I had a wake-up call where he told me to stop mulling around looking like I'd lost something. So, that's what I did. By the time I called about getting my old job back at the big company, it was already taken. So, I applied for something else and got hired by the engineering division."
She smiled. "Sweet. I'm glad you stopped mulling around too."
"Yeah, I'm pretty lucky," he said. "I love the job, and there's plenty of room to move up if I work at it. And if I stay out of trouble."
"Unless you've had run-ins with the law after I left, you said that was the longest you'd ever spent in jail. Two months for trespassing and disorderly conduct, right?"
He scratched his head. "Sounds about right. I haven't been arrested since then."
"Do you regret what you did?" she asked.
"Protesting for the rights of shifters…? No, I don't regret that at all. I'd do it again if needed. I might have to. That battle isn't over quite yet. And if I have to go to jail again for it, I'll do it."
"The issues are close to your heart then?"
In the town of Aspen Valley, both shifters and humans fought for shifter rights, but she suspected he was fighting it on a personal level. Not just because he had risked his neck and further tarnished his record to do so. She suspected Andre was a shifter. Had guessed it all along even without the rumors. And Andre had yet to deny or confirm anything. Not all shifters made it public knowledge that they were, in fact…shifters.
Sonia saw Andre as a normal guy. Just like every other guy out there trying to make a living and a name for himself. She saw no immediate difference in the men she knew to be wolf shifters and the men she knew were humans. It didn't matter one way or the other if he was human or not. Not to her anyway.
He leveled his gaze with hers. "Yes, the issue is very close to my heart."
"When your mom invited you to move to Cincinnati with us, why didn't you come?" she asked.
"Seriously? Your dad thought I was a common criminal. His exact words were that my mom was so sweet that he didn't know how on earth she could give birth to a total reject like me."
Sonia shook her head. "My dad would never say that."
"I heard him. He was talking on the phone and I happened to be in earshot. He made it clear to me that he didn't like me…at all." Andre shrugged. "I didn't really care. I didn't need to earn his trust or his respect or anything like that. As long as he didn't do anything to hurt my mom, I stayed clear of him."
"I wish he had given you a chance to see the real you," Sonia said.
Andre chuckled. "Trust me. He doesn't want to see the real me."
"Yeah, well what does that mean?"
"It means that maybe it's best that he just sees me as his lover's son and that's about it," he stated.
"How's your brother?" she asked out of the blue.
Andre and his older brother were only two years apart. They resembled each other so much, despite having different dads.
"He's good," he replied.
"Jacob once told me that he lived for two things: hunting with his Pack and hunting women? Does he still hunt both?"
"He still hunts."
I held his gaze and asked, "Well don't you hunt with him?"
Andre paused as he contemplated her question. He looked serious for a moment, and then a small grin spread across his lips.
"What are you really asking, Sonia?"
I pressed my lips together and smiled playfully. "I think you know. Your mom broke it off with my dad," Sonia said, effectively changing the subject.
As much as she wanted to talk about him, talking about him made her think of other things. Even with the limited amount of time they'd spent together in the past before Sonia moved on, she remembered how connected she felt to him in more ways than one. For the past four years, she had reminisced about him.
Andre arched an eyebrow. "Do you know why my mom decided to split from your dad?"
"I have my suspicions, but my dad says she told him she wasn't cut out for the life he wanted. When we got to Cincinnati, it didn't take him long to become acquainted with his neighbors and the big corporate and political heads in the city. He got involved in politics just like he did in Aspen Valley. He's led
several political campaigns in our region back home and wants to run for governor one day. Wanda's not really the outgoing type. She hated going to all the fundraising functions."
"That's kinda what she told me," Andre confirmed.
"I hated attending them too, but not as much as she did."
Andre leaned back in his chair. "I'm sorry it came to that, but my mom isn't back in town yet."
"Maybe she's still packing," Sonia said.
"Maybe. Interview, huh?" Andre commented.
"Yes. At Concord Greenhouse and Nursery. I'm planning to study agricultural science and they have an eight-month long internship with the director there that I really want."
"But what happened to college?" he asked.
"I'm going to take a year off before I start. I was searching for volunteering opportunities initially, but while I was looking I came across a paid position in Aspen Valley. I know the region and I wouldn't feel out of place there. I couldn't pass it up. If I get this internship, it would be like killing two birds with one stone."
"Did your daddy approve of you not enrolling in college right away?"
"He didn't at first. It took some convincing and we agreed that I'd start applying for next fall. I did. I've already been accepted to two of five colleges I've applied to so far."
"Well congrats to you. I always knew you were going to do something good with that brain of yours," he said.
She shrugged. "Let's be honest. The work's not that hard."
"Give yourself some credit. Not everyone can make a garden grow. The other day, I was looking at the garden box your dad built for you to plant in when the three of you first moved out here. I think the carrots and potatoes are still growing. Not sure who's coming around to dig them up when we're not here, but they're still thriving."
She chuckled. "At least you know we've got carrots and potatoes if we're snowed in tomorrow."
He leaned forward in the chair, placing his crossed arms on the table. "If we're going to be honest, I have to admit that I'm looking forward to being snowed in with you."
Aspen Valley Wolf Pack (The Complete Series) Page 63
